KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia – When the world watches the first-ever Olympic ski halfpipe contest Tuesday, the view will be elevated by Hans Lehner.

From a cubicle not much bigger than a privy high above the pipe, Lehner will toggle a joystick with his right hand, roll a wheel and flip a lever with his left and capture the action from above, below and alongside the high-flying athletes.

The camera operator for Vienna-based CAMCAT has the nimble, screen-staring reflexes of a teenager captaining a “Call of Duty” hero through a hail of gunfire.

But once doctors popped her dislocated shoulder back into her socket, Steamboat Springs’ Arielle Gold had to return to the pipe that had just pummeled her. Not to compete, but to cheer on her teammates, two of whom would climb the podium.

She’s not sure what happened. It was her second training run down the pipe. She had washed out on her frontside 540 higher up the pipe and was picking up speed to throw the 720. Stuck it clean and was barreling toward the leftside wall when she “caught a snowsnake or something.”

“I think it’s refreshing for the snowboard world to see a true snowboarder’s snowboarder do well,” Davis said, making sure to draw a distinction between “the world” and the “snowboarding world.” One of those groups really likes Shaun White. The other embraces riders like Davis and Kotsenburg.

“It’s good to a see a true snowboarder doing well because he snowboards a lot and he loves it and he likes the tricks he’s doing and he enjoys doing them,” Davis said. “It’s nice to see the true meaning of snowboarding coming through in the contests, which is to snowboard a lot and maybe do some contests. It’s not like you went to gym for three months and got where you are. You went snowboarding a lot and that’s what got you where you are. There’s some feel to the sport, not just tricks. There’s some style and lightness now.”

After a few days of practice, most of the 30 riders competing in the halfpipe appear to be struggling, slowing as they race through the slow trough. Defending gold medalist Shaun White looked solid two days ago, but Monday he appeared frustrated with the pipe condition.

Deep, sugary snow in the middle of the halfpipe is slowing riders as they power toward the 22-foot walls. Many were simply ollying the trough — hopping over granulated snow — during recent practice sessions. They skidded down the bottom shaking their heads, huddling with coaches in obvious distress over the conditions.

It should be pointed out that the halfpipe at Cypress Mountain for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics also was a mess during practice runs. Warm weather and rain left the trough a near river. Trucks hauled in snow and the pipe was fine for competition.

Sarah Burke of Canada looks on during a news conference at the Winter X Games in this 2009 file photo. Burke died Jan. 19, 2012, nine days after a training accident on a halfpipe in Park City, Utah. (Nathan Bilow, AP file)

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — Spencer O’Brien expected a call from IOC officials after she lifted her board up to the camera following her qualifying run on the slopestyle course and pointed to the faded and fraying “Sarah” band on her bindings.

“I couldn’t believe they let me get away with it,” the Canadian said.

Not everyone is so lucky. Patches of black tape on ski, boards and helmet are covering the ubiquitous “Sarah” stickers touted by nearly every North American pro skier and snowboarder in honor of Sahah Burke, a pioneer in snowsports who died two years ago after sustaining a head injury in the Park City halfpipe while she trained for 2014 Winter Olympics.

Torah Bright wanted to sport her “Sarah” stickers on her helmet and board as she competed in three snowboarding disciplines. Last week she posted on her Facebook page that the International Olympic Committee denied her request to fly the “Sarah” flag, saying the committee consider the stickers a political statement. The IOC denied Bright’s request based on the strict bylaws related to equipment in the Olympic charter prohibiting any “form of publicity or propaganda, commercial or otherwise” except for the name of the manufacturer.

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — The multi-venued Olympic Rosa Khutor Extreme Park is living up to its name. The slopestyle course’s huge jumps are intimidating the world’s best. The steep moguls course is challenging all skiers. Some halfpipe riders are grousing — off the record — about the condition of the pipe. And the snowboard cross course is keeping the extreme theme.

“It’s a man’s course for sure,” said Nate Holland, the seven-time X Games gold medalist hoping for his first Olympic medal in the Sochi Winter Games. “Big features with not a lot of time between them. It’s going to be fast.”

With a shot to numb her heel, 16-year-old Ty Walker stepped onto the Olympic stage Sunday and went for broke. She spun and flipped, grabbed and tweaked and fulfilled her unlikely teenage dream of competing in snowboard slopestyle’s biggest-ever event.

While she fell short of making the finals contest in Sunday morning’s qualifiers at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, the scrappy rider with the pervasive grin fought through a painfully bruised heel to compete in slopestyle’s Olympic debut.

“I hate needles. I can’t handle them,” said the Vermont snowboarder who earned her Olympic slopestyle berth with strong performances in an intensive qualifying season. “But it was worth it because I got to come out and ride in the Olympics.”

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — The two Canadian snowboarders who were most critical about Shaun White’s decision to drop out of the slopestyle contest failed to make the podium on Saturday, when their discipline debuted on the Olympic stage at Russia’s stout Rosa Khutor Extreme Park.

Sage Kotsenburg of Park City threw a trick he’d never done before to win the first-ever Olympic slopestyle contest at the Sochi Winter Olympics on Saturday. Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

KRASNAYA POLYANA, RUSSIA – Slopestyle snowboarding’s Olympic debut saw an emphasis on style over technical trickery as Park City’s Sage Kotsenburg took home the discipline’s first-ever gold and the first medal of the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Team USA’s first medal of the Games was earned with complex grabs and a first-ever 1,620-degree spinning trick by Kotsenburg, whose casual, fun-loving form harkens to snowboarding’s roots.

“I just kind of do random stuff all the time. I don’t really make a plan up. I didn’t even know I was going to do a 1620 in my run until three minutes before I dropped,” said the wild-haired 20-year-old.

Outside of a win last month in U.S. Snowboarding’s fifth and final Olympic qualifier at Mammoth Mountain, Kotsenburg hasn’t climbed to the top of a snowboarding podium since he was 11 years old.

American snowboarders Jamie Anderson and Karly Shorr brought the heat to the Olympic debut of slopestyle snowboarding Thursday in the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, qualifying for Sunday’s finals.

The two Americans will join six other women in the finals. Switzerland’s Isabel Derungs, Australian Torah Bright, Canada’s Spencer O’Brien and Finland’s Enni Rukajarvi lead the first round of qualifying under cloudless skies Thursday.

Austria’s Anna Gasser eke past Anderson’s first-run score to lead the second round of qualifying. Swiss rider Elana Koenz finished third. Michigan’s Shorr spun a solid final run on the daunting course to grab the fourth qualifying position.

The top eight qualifiers get to skip Sunday morning’s semi-finals and advance straight to the Sunday afternoon finals.

Jason Blevins covers tourism, mountain business, skiing and outdoor adventure sports for both the business and sports sections at The Denver Post, which he joined in 1997. He skis, pedals, paddles and occasionally boogies in the hills.

The All Things Olympics blog from The Denver Post covers the athletes, events and stories of the Olympic Games and Olympic sports, including the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia. Its writers — John Meyer, Jason Blevins and Mark Kiszla — will feature profiles, articles, analysis and personal reflection.